At the time it was released, this video was the most expensive music video ever filmed. It was estimated to have cost £40,000, with the majority of the money going to recreating scenes from 1940s serials.
Director Mike Mansfield also did videos for Kim Wilde, Ozzy Osbourne, The Cure, The Moody Blues, and almost every other prominent British band of the early 80s.
Enjoy!
On August 1st, 1981, MTV premiered. Over the course of 24 hours, 166 unique music videos were played on MTV. Yes, there was a time when the M actually did stand for music.
The 88th video to premiere on MTV was the video for Rod Stewart’s You’re In My Heart. It’s Rod singing in a restaurant. This was one of 11 Rod Stewart videos to be shown on MTV’s first day of broadcast.
Enjoy!
The First Videos Shown on MTV:
You learn something new every day. Up until Monday, I didn’t even know this song existed but it does and it’s even got some historical importance as this was one of the earliest “rap” singles to chart in the UK. It reached number three on the UK charts.
As for the video, what you have to remember is that it was released shortly after the success of John Boorman’s Excalibur and knight in shining armor were suddenly very popular again. Terry English, who designed the armor in Excalibur, also designed the armor that Adam Ant wears in this video. Why does Adam turn into a football player? Why is the song’s co-writer, Marco Pirroni, dressed up like Liberace? How did they get Lulu to agree to play the princess that Adam rescues from the castle? When did Adam Ant turn into Bruce Lee? When Adam Ant is rapping, anything can happen. In the video’s final moments, we return to Excalibur as Adam loses his sword to a mysterious figure in the moat.
This video was filmed at Bodiam Castle, which has stood since 1385 and has been open to the public since 1921. (It’s currently owned and operated by the National Trust.) The video was co-directed by veteran music video director Mike Mansfield and Adam Ant, himself.
Enjoy!
For those curious, here are the full lyrics to Ant Rap:
Put some wax on the trax and slide on onta here
Hane hane hane hane hane
Hatchets in the corner ears to the ground
Improve to the groove get down to the sound
Buttons and bows and bleu blanc rouge
All things lively must be used
Liberte, egalite, au jour d’hui see’est tres tres tres
Voici l’opportunite nous incroyables
I got the moves they got the grooves
Summoned the gods and they all approved
Bad vibes akimbo on the shelf
Bit of a rap thing going for myself
This gold on the teeth’s no sense at all
It only matters when it’s on the wall
I’m standing here with my four men
Let’s start that rapping thing again:
Marco, merrick, terry lee, gary tibbs and yours truly
In the naughty north and in the sexy south
We’re all singing I have the mouth
In the naughty north and in the sexy south
We’re all singing I have the mouth
I have the mouth
So tired of anarchists looking at me
Don’t need their credibility
“Destroy, ” they say, “defy! Condemn! “
As long as you don’t destroy them
With twenty years of drugs and drink
I thought the time had come to think
About standing up and saying that
It’s tragedy and such old hat
I’m standing here with my four men
Let’s start that rapping thing again:
(I got) marco, merrick, terry lee, gary tibbs and yours truly
In the naughty north and in the sexy south
We’re all singing I have the mouth
In the naughty north and in the sexy south
We’re all singing I have the mouth
I have the mouth
These happy feet are all we need
Summoned the gods and they all agreed
These feet won’t stop they’re in such a hurry
I knock it on the head and I go for a curry
Staying sober can be neat
Get drunk on these here happy feet
Keep on trying to pin me down
“Why a title for your sound? “
I’m standing here with my four men
Let’s do this rapping thing again:
I got marco, merrick, terry lee, gary tibbs and yours truly
In the naughty north and in the sexy south
We’re all singing I have the mouth. ..
And I have the mouth
And you have the mouth
And they got the mouth
John Cleese used to joked that, on the 3rd of July, the UK would celebrate “Dependence Day,” by setting up cardboard cut-outs of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and taunting them with shouts of, “Well, why don’t you go get your freedom, then!?”
Sadly, Dependence Day is not an actual holiday. Perhaps it should be. If the UK can celebrate Guy Fawkes Day without being sure whether or not it means to celebrate Fawkes’s plan to blow up Parliament or his death, I certainly think that time can be found to shout rude things at a caricature of John Adams.
Today, in honor of Dependence Day, I picked a music video for a song that has nothing to do with the American revolution but it does mention London and I guess that’s close enough. This song was actually written because the members of ELO used to spend a lot of time riding the train between from Birmingham to London.
Enjoy!
From the book, I Want My MTV:
Steven Levy, writing in Rolling Stone, unfavorably compared “superficial, easy-to-swallow” acts such as Adam Ant to Bob Dylan.
You’d think having discovered Einstein’s brain in 1978 would have made him more open-minded. No really, he did. It’s worth reading his story about it.
He said some other things concerning MTV, which included quoting Dr. Thomas Radecki about the dangers of music videos. You might remember him as the guy who attacked the music video for Street Of Dreams by Rainbow because of the brainwashing psychiatrist, among other things. The guy who said people were killing themselves and others over D&D. He had his medical license revoked in 1992 because of conduct with a patient. More recently he was caught in a opiates scandal. Probably not the best source in hindsight.
Perhaps that’s why there is only one article on Rolling Stone’s website by Levy. Or they just thought the one on Steve Jobs was the only one worth putting up online.
He has gone on to do better things after the 80s–along with doing good things back then as well. He appears to have lightened up on his condemnation of MTV as early as 1992.
I just thought I’d include that since I find it hilarious to think that anyone ever thought up the idea to compare Adam Ant, or any similar act, to Bob Dylan. I don’t care if the context was commercialism using Adam Ant’s persona as a way of contrasting someone known for lyrics with someone known for their look in order to say that marketing had won out over the songs themselves. The comparison still makes me laugh.
So here’s a video that seems to imply that the Adam Ant persona is a combination of Clint Eastwood…
Alice Cooper…
Rudolph Valentino…
and Douglas Fairbanks (also Adam Ant’s character from the video for Stand And Deliver).
We get Diana Dors showing up as his fairy godmother, backed up by some guys who a year later would wear even less clothes for It’s Raining Men by The Weather Girls.
Back to I Want My MTV:
Adam Ant: My strategy for making videos was sex, subversion, style, and humor.
I’d say he accomplished that here. I particularly like that we don’t get the typical ending of Cinderella. The change appears to be permanent–from someone who is pushed around and shy to someone that is confident being themselves. We never see him pair up with anyone. He stands alone because the point isn’t to find love based on shoe size. It’s finding yourself when you take out what other people think of you from the equation.
The video is listed as being directed by both Mike Mansfield and Adam Ant. Mansfield did a bunch of late-70s and early-80s music videos.
Stephanie Gluck, or Stephanie Coleman as it is on Wikipedia, was the one responsible for the Prince Charming dance. Wikipedia says that the dance was arranged to mean Pride, Courage, Humour, and Flair (in that order).
There’s an archive of a fan site that that has some additional information. I can’t confirm enough of it, so I just included the link. However, it is interesting to note that both it, and Wikipedia state that one of the characters that Adam Ant plays is Vito Corleone. That isn’t in here. I guess that was removed for some reason.
Adam Ant and Rolf Harris came to an arrangement over money because of the similarities between Harris’ song, War Canoe, and Prince Charming. I can hear it, but then again, you can listen to the Canoe Song, where Adam Ant says they both drew inspiration from, and hear the same similarities. They’re just not as strong. I can understand why they would come to an agreement over it.
Finally, after the way I began this post, I think it’s worth looking at these quotes–two from Levy in a 1992 New York Times article and one from Adam Ant in I Want My MTV:
Levy: We’ve all gotten used to the junkification of America life — to the fact that you can now eat McDonald’s and that 50 years from now, we may even be nostalgic about it.
Levy: They’ve also gotten more critical of, and more of a sense of humor about, themselves.
Adam Ant: In its initial form, video was a revolution. Then MTV became worse than the record companies, and that’s fucking saying something. It became very decadent, like ancient Rome in a way. It was all about who you knew, and how many bottles of champagne you sent them. It began as a tough, groundbreaking, sexy, subversive, stylish thing with a sense of humor. Then it became all business.
The two of them only differ in age by 3 years, so we’re not talking about a generation gap.
Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnNWUUZ7cEA
I am not going to talk about the background of the song or album. There’s a reason I usually stay away from behind-the-scenes stuff, and stick with the finished product. It’s a great song–end of story for me on that matter.
The music video is cheesy fun. It’s Ozzy Osbourne going around like he’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Wolf with the occasional cutaway to band members. It was partially filmed at an actual sanatorium. That sanatorium being Holloway Sanatorium.
My favorite thing I found on this music video was that in at least two places online they bring up that this was early on for music videos, which is why it looks the way it does. Not true. They had been around for a lot longer prior to 1983 in the modern form. Abba did a music video for Waterloo in 1974 and many more throughout the 1970s. You can go back even further to the 1960’s music video for Strawberry Fields Forever by The Beatles. The same year as Bark At The Moon, we had stuff like Shooting Shark and Love Is A Battlefield that are a far cry from this music video.
I think it looks the way it does because it was directed by Mike Mansfield who also brought us Goody Two Shoes by Adam Ant. If you look at several of the music videos that he did for Adam Ant around the time, then you’ll notice they have this stagey/theatrical look about them. I’m willing to bet they hired him because the people involved liked the style Mansfield was using in the Adam Ant/Adam & The Ants music videos that not only look the same as this one, but were mostly made in the years right before 1983. The best example to look at is Stand And Deliver that was done in 1981. In fact, you can look several other artists he did music videos for at the time such as Charlotte Sometimes by The Cure and Love Blonde by Kim Wilde to see the same kind of style.
Enjoy!
It’s my birthday today so I chose to spotlight Goody Two Shoes by Adam Ant. Among other ties to the song, I too am a goody two shoes. It also happens to fall in line with the last two music videos I did as something that is so much fun to sing along to while you watch it.
One of the most interesting things to me about this video is the use of repeated actions throughout it. It matches the lyrics and title, but it also fits with theories I have read for why temporal overlaps exist in early films. They say that perhaps it wasn’t a mistake, but a double your pleasure, double your fun thing. I know I enjoy seeing Adam dive across the table, then multiple times across the bed with actor Caroline Munro lying in it.
Munro has been in numerous things, but is probably best known for The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). Of course all things are connected, so it turns out actor and music video director Daniel Kleinman who is this video also happened to direct the music video for Sheryl Crow’s song for the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) made two decades later.
We also get a cameo from the Jailhouse Rock (1957) set and a clever use of a mirror, which doubles the image. The Jailhouse Rock set can also double as a copy of every set used in an early cinema film called Peeping Tom that was remade endless times. The butler even turns out to be a peeping tom. We also get an iris shot of Adam that is repeated with the shot through the keyhole near the end.
There’s a bunch of interesting stuff going on in this video.
Since it is my birthday, let’s amp it up, and triple our fun with two more performances/music videos for Goody Two Shoes.
Enjoy all three!
Through the Shattered Lens 